


The Food of Love

by ladyknightley



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bread, F/M, Fluff fluff fluffity fluff, baker!Ron, there's a lot of bread in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 19:32:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8069917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyknightley/pseuds/ladyknightley
Summary: There's change afoot in the Granger-Weasley household. Time for Ron to be baking his feelings, then. Hermione's not complaining...





	

**Author's Note:**

> I know lots of people like Ron-as-a-baker headcanons so here is a little ficlet about that. I have baking on the brain thanks to GBBO... Please, if someone has a better title, tell me. I cannot title. And thanks to the anon who prompted this (for hpshipweeks) :)

She wakes at two minutes to five to an empty bed and the smell of baking bread filling their small flat, so she shuffles into her slippers, yawning, and pads down the hallway to the kitchen. Sure enough, Ron is in there, silently kneading dough in just his pyjama bottoms. In the dim light of early dawn, she can see every muscle in his back outlined as he methodically pushes and pulls the bread. The sight fills her with longing and wonder, and she walks over, placing her hands on his shoulders and leaning her body into his. He pauses the kneading, and she feels rather than hears him let out a long breath.

“Couldn’t sleep?” she asks, her voice still husky from bed.

“Bit nervous,” he confesses.

“Don’t be,” she says, taking a step backwards. “You’ve done it all before, you know.” She waves her wand, and all the candles in the kitchen are suddenly alight, adding to the light from the sun’s early rays coming through their window. Down below them, the city is asleep, still, and she finds herself pitying all the people in it who will not be waking to Ron’s freshly baked bread.

“Not like this, I haven’t,” he says. He turns around, a worried frown on his face, but before she can say anything to soothe him, he smiles.

“What?”

“Nice slippers,” he grins.

“Shut up,” she says, trying to supress her own smile. They’re pink and fluffy and absolutely hideous, but also the most comfortable things in the world. He bought them for her for their last anniversary—he had to honour the memory, he had said, of the first nightclothes he’d ever seen her in. She’d remembered the fluffy pink dressing gown she’d taken to Hogwarts in her first year, remembered night-time wanderings accidentally discovering three-headed dogs and just how _very_ annoying her fellow first years could be, and had laughed and laughed.

Now, Ron dumps the dough in a tin, wipes his hands on a spare tea towel, and comes to stand with her over by the window. “I’m sorry if I woke you,” he says. “I was trying to be quiet.”

Hermione shakes her head. “You didn’t,” she says. “Did you get _any_ sleep last night?”

He wrinkles his nose. “A little. But by four, I knew it was time to give up. This is my third loaf, though, so it’s not exactly been a wasted night. Morning. Whatever.”

Hermione can cook four or five dishes that she rotates around depending on what ingredients are in the cupboard and how much she can or can’t be bothered to spend time throwing them together. She can bake a basic Victoria sponge cake, and it’s usually edible, but that’s about it. Domesticity isn’t really her thing.

Ron, though, can _bake_. His mother taught him how to make and knead dough after the war was over, seeing the therapeutic value in punching something that won’t punch back for her youngest son, and his interest in baking spiralled from there. Cakes, biscuits, pastries followed, growing fancier and fancier over the years with ever more complex recipes and unusual ingredients. Baking isn’t just a matter of following the recipe to the letter, though; it’s about instinctively knowing when something’s a little dry, in need of more milk, or sugar, what can be substituted for what to make it even more delicious.

Ron’s good at instincts. Hermione’s good at following the rules.

But sometimes even he needs to come back to the very basics. Whenever he’s stressed, it’s bread he makes, and it’s not yet fully dawn and there’s already one cooked loaf, one in the oven, and one waiting to go in. Stress levels must be high, she thinks.

“Why are you nervous?” she asks. “You’ve worked at the shop before. You’ve done it all—inventing products, making things, sales, marketing, stock...you know you can do it. I have total faith in you. So does George, or he wouldn’t have made you the offer.”

“Mmm,” Ron says.

“Is it...do you regret leaving the Aurors?” she asks. She wonders if all this change is the right thing, if she’s been unconsciously pressuring him into doing it without considering whether or not it’s what he really wants. Selfishly, when he’d first brought up the idea of quitting there to go into partnership with George at the Wheezes store several months ago, her first thought had been relief that she would no longer have to worry that every time he went to work, he might come back injured, or worse.

“No,” he says, and his voice is confident, certain. “I loved that job, but it was time. I don’t regret leaving.” He sighs. “I just worry that I’ll be replacing Fred, somehow. Elbowing him out. Insulting his memory. And I know that’s ridiculous,” he adds, holding up his hands. “I know it’s daft, and that with the rate the shop is expanding, George needs someone else there. It makes financial sense for the business, it’s good for him, it’s good for me, and our life...”

“But?” she asks.

“Yesterday. Seeing the sign. ‘Proprietors: Weasley and Weasley’. Weasley _and_ Weasley, again,” he says. “It was weird. Like we’re going backwards and forwards at once. I dunno. Maybe I’m just being stupid.”

“You’re not being stupid,” she says at once. She reaches for his hands, holds one in each of hers. “You’re not replacing Fred. George doesn’t think so, I don’t think so, _no one_ thinks so. It’s just a change, that’s all. They all take some getting used to.” They both look down, together, at her swollen seven months pregnant stomach. Suddenly, everything is happening.

“I suppose,” he says. “I just think that—” He’s interrupted, then, by a timer going off. Hhe pulls away from her to put his loaf in the oven and remove the one that’s in there. The smell is heavenly, indescribably good, and Hermione finds herself tearing into it, slathering it in butter and gulping it down whilst it’s still hot, groaning in pleasure, before she can even really register what she’s doing.

Ron watches her in amusement. “Good, huh?” he asks, and she flushes.

“I’m hungry _all the time_ ,” she says, buttering a piece and holding it out to him.

He bends down, bites into it, chews thoughtfully, then says, “I suppose that’s understandable when you’ve got...” She groans again, knowing what’s coming next: “...a bun in the oven!”

“You’re going to have to come up with better puns than that if you want to work in a joke shop,” she says seriously.

“I know, that was pretty terrible,” he acknowledges. “In my defence, though, I’ve only had about three hours sleep. Do you think I should take a loaf for George as a bribe in case he wants to fire me for filing all the owl orders in the bin or something, in my sleep deprived state?”

“I do not,” she says firmly. “Firstly, because I know you are going to do wonderfully and not make any mistakes at all; secondly, because George is not only your brother but also a pretty nice guy so even if you did make a mistake, he would understand and not fire you; and thirdly, because I want to eat all the bread myself. No one else is allowed any of it. It’s all mine.”

He laughs. “Not even the baker?”

She relents. “Maybe a little,” she says, cutting another slice and biting into it. “Mmm,” she mumbles.

He shakes his head. “Sometimes I think you only married me for the food,” he says mournfully.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says. “I did it because you look so attractive when you cook.”

“Well, it’s good to know I’ve got a future career lined up in case I cock it up at the shop, I suppose,” he says.

“I am not sharing your baking with anyone.”

“I meant as a male model.”

She shoves him, and he laughs. “Seriously,” she says. “You won’t cock it up. I have complete faith in you. You won’t mess up, and you’re not replacing Fred. You’re just doing what you’ve done for the shop for so many years, only now you get a fancy title to go with it. Honestly, you’ve done so much over the years, I’m just glad you’re finally getting the recognition you deserve. It’s about time.”

“You think?”

“I _know_ ,” she says. “I am so proud of you.”

“I know,” he says, and then he leans across the table and kisses her. His lips taste of his bread, and she loves him a little bit more for it.

The sun has come up some more, and soon they’ll both have to shower, get dressed, and head off to work. She’ll floo to the Ministry to prepare a big case for the Wizengamot, important legislation she desperately wants to see through the court before she goes on maternity leave, and he’ll go to open up number 93, Diagon Alley, as co-owner of the shop for the very first time. But whilst they wait, they can sit in the kitchen, eating bread and laughing together, and although the future might be terrifying and exciting in equal measure, the present, Hermione thinks, is pretty perfect.   


End file.
